by Ruth Rendell
Hannah was shaking her head. “They had much more not in common. One woman was good-looking, the other not. One was blond, the other dark. One was living with a partner, the other living at home with her family. One left school at sixteen, the other was going on to higher education.”
“None of that gets us very far, does it?” Burden shrugged. Everyone who came into this room gravitated to the window to contemplate the sky, the gathering clouds, ink-colored and snowy. “I’ve seen the builders who’ll do the work on Victoria Terrace. They’re William Fish and Son of Stowerton and they tell me they don’t have keys to any of the houses. They’ve been in to look the place over, of course they have, but they’ve no keys. Fish says no one would need a key if they were prepared to do a little breaking and entering. Not one of the back entrances was securely fastened. A child could have forced the back door of number four.
“As we know, Surrage-Samphire is doing the decorative work.” Burden perched himself on his favorite corner of Wexford’s desk. “Ross Samphire is the dominant one in that partnership and the one with the cabinet-making skills. He’s been to Victoria Terrace and been inside all the houses, assessing what has to be done on the decorative side. On the face of it, he seems a respectable sort of bloke…”
“But yet,” said Wexford, quoting from his favorite play. “‘I do not like but yet.’ What’s wrong with him, Mike?”
“It has to be prejudice,” Burden said. “He’s a very good-looking man and he knows it. On his living-room wall he’s got a huge nude. I don’t know anything about art but could tell this wasn’t a reproduction of something you’d see in a gallery. More like the sort of stuff you used to see for sale in home-improvement places in the nineties. I don’t mean it was indecent. There were too many wispy bits of scarf floating about on it for that. But Ross Samphire is married with kids and it wasn’t the sort of thing a woman would fancy up on her walls.”
Wexford burst out laughing while Hannah fixed on the inspector a stony gaze. It was a glare, Wexford thought, which encompassed disgust with Ross Samphire, distaste for that sort of picture, militant feminism, and impatient contempt at Burden’s whole philosophy of life.
“It has to be prejudice, as you say,” Wexford said. “Who’s Surrage?”
“His wife’s maiden name. I suppose it’s some tax dodge. She doesn’t take an active part in things. The brother is called Rick. He lives in Pomfret and his job description is ‘company secretary.’ But these people only have a tenuous connection with the house where Megan’s body was found.”
“Maybe,” Wexford said, “but they have a rather complex connection with several aspects of the case. Look at it this way. They were contracted to do the interiors of the houses in Victoria Terrace. They were used by the Marshalsons in jobs done according to their interior designs and they were recommended by the Marshalsons to the Hillands. Now there’s nothing sinister in any of this on the face of it, but it is a threefold connection.”
The pressure in Wexford’s head seemed to slacken a little as the sky darkened. He crossed to the gauge on the wall, turned off the air-conditioning and flung open two of the casements. Hannah looked shocked. Burden went to the window and took a deep breath. Above the skyline, the outline of the downs, a tree of lightning, thick twisted trunk and flaring branches, reared up in a brilliant dazzlement.
“Storm’s coming at last,” Wexford said.
“Surrage-Samphire, guv,” said Hannah at his computer, “has a website. Here it is.” Burden was looking at the screen over her shoulder. “Ross is very proud of all his qualifications, diplomas, and whatever; a lot of City and Guilds stuff, training at the William Morris School and a year spent in Florence studying; Rick is hardly mentioned here. Lots of illustrations of wood carving and plaster molding and statuary and—”
Thunder cracking, then rolling and reverberating, cut off the end of her sentence. The sound it made was like barrels rolled off the back of a truck into the cellars of a pub. Wexford stood at the window as the wind began to rise, increasing in seconds from a gentle breeze to a tearing gale that ripped leaves from the trees.
“Anything known about where these people were on June the twenty-fourth?”
“Ross was away on holiday in the south of Spain with his wife and kids,” Burden said. “I don’t know about Rick. I haven’t talked to him yet.”
“It must have been bloody hot,” said Wexford as branched lightning suddenly sprang from the dark curves of the downs. The thick clouds, purple, deep gray, and a livid-edged white, began to drop rain in great globules that made coin spots on the car park tarmac. Suddenly the cloud canopy seemed to split and spill rain which in seconds poured in sheets. Wexford closed the casements as water splashed against them inside and out. “Alibis for the relevant times will have to be checked. It probably really is a matter of eliminating people from our inquiries.”
“Yes, apart from your threefold connection, which is pretty tenuous, we’ve no reason to suspect them. You might as well suspect Jimmy Gawson for having a threefold connection with the Bartlow family, employing Megan, having her live above his shop and knowing her grandmother.”
“Maybe I do,” said Wexford.
Burden ignored him. “I asked Ross about September the first. He says he, Rick, and a man who works for him called Colin Fry were all in the old Westminster Bank Building in the High Street here—you can just see it from this window—from eight A.M. till four P.M.”
They were all at the window, but the sheets of rain made it impossible to see the old bank building on the corner of Queen Street.
“All of them would have had easy access to bricks and concrete blocks. We ought to know more about this Rick before we go searching for more people with a knowledge of Victoria Terrace.”
“Did Megan herself have any connection with it?” Hannah asked.
“It might be a good idea,” said Wexford, “to ask Sandra Warner about that. And perhaps Lara Bartlow. Incidentally, is there a Mr. Bartlow about?”
“He lives in Pauceley, guv. He’s remarried and got more children. I think he’s worth a visit.”
When they reached the foot of the staircase it was impossible to get out of the double doors, the rain was so torrential. It was the kind of rain that falls in the tropics, straight down, taps turned on to full capacity. If a dark translucent curtain had been hung between the doors and the forecourt it could not have obscured more densely the parked cars, the walls, and the street beyond. All that could be seen were black shapes and a curious kind of glitter as the torrent streamed onto the tarmac, plummeted and splashed. Everything had become black but shiny, color banished, wet beyond belief as puddles grew into lakes and a million points of rain struck and bounced off sheets of water. And all the time lightning, the zigzag variety now, split the sky, growing closer and closer, moving overhead as the thunder came a nanosecond after its visible sign.
Donaldson was stuck outside in the car. A twenty-yard dash to the doors would have half drowned him. The duty sergeant, Campbell, came out from behind the desk and two women PCs emerged from an office to stand at the big windows and watch the storm. When Bal Bhattacharya came out of the lift and crossed the black-and-white floor to join them, Wexford saw Hannah turn her head and their eyes meet and knew at once in that glance. So long as whatever was going on didn’t disrupt his team…
Off to pick up her sons from school, Sylvia had given a lift to Mary Beaumont, whom she found waiting for a bus.
“My husband’s got the car today,” Mary said and, with a burst of laughter, “Naomi’d call that domestic violence.”
“I expect she would,” and Sylvia laughed too, feeling even more drawn to Mary when the other woman said she hoped Sylvia had noticed she hadn’t been dropping in. “How did you and Naomi meet?”
“Oh, didn’t you know? At SOCC.”
“What’s SOCC, Mary?”
“The Sussex Overcoming Childlessness Circle. I do a bit for them. A bit of counseling. To get back to me and you. You know you can drop
in on me anytime. If you need anything, that is, or if there’s something troubling you. I’ll give you my mobile number.”
“Well, thanks, but they do keep an eye on me at the antenatal center, you know.” Once the words were out Sylvia thought they sounded cold. “I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful.”
“Nothing to be grateful for. Would you drop me at the next corner?”
But by the next corner the rain had begun, in half a minute had reached torrent proportions and Sylvia had to park the car. On a double yellow line. It was no use, she couldn’t have driven on. The windscreen wipers were unable to cope, in minutes the roadway would be under water. Leaning back against the driver’s seat, Sylvia felt the baby move more strongly than had yet happened. For the first time she could see the movement. Mary saw it too and announced the sight with a peal of laughter.
“He’s a big strong boy, Sylvia.”
“He’s a girl.”
“That’d please Naomi. They’ll have to keep your two at the school till this stops.”
“If it ever does. Even if it doesn’t, would you and your husband like to come around for a drink about six?”
The stereotypical middle-class family was how Hannah saw the Bartlows—and therefore looked on them with a distaste she was careful not to show. Their home, in a Pauceley close, was a three-bedroomed semidetached house with a Norway spruce (discard from Christmas past) in the front garden and a doorbell that rang like a peal of church bells.
Almost certainly in expectation of this visit, the living room—three-piece suite, television, a small terrier, and a boy and girl sitting at the table doing homework—was exquisitely tidy, Gary Bartlow’s wife in afternoon frock and makeup, Gary himself looking sheepish in the suit he had worn to work. He had come a long way since his marriage to Sandra Warner but probably as far as he would get. Hannah thought it sad that a man, in bettering himself, should take this route to this goal—another dreary marriage (as she saw it), another dull family, no doubt a crippling mortgage when he could have been free, adventurous, ambitious. “Bourgeois” was the word and she often thought it a shame that it had gone so utterly out of date.
Having assembled the family for Hannah’s edification, Mrs. Bartlow swept children, homework, and dog out of the room to leave her husband alone with the policewoman, as she would no doubt have called her. Gary started to talk about Megan.
“I’ve always seen my girls,” he said. “My big girls, I called them. Poor Megan—it was terrible, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was. Very terrible, Mr. Bartlow.”
“She was over here just a while before, you know. On the Saturday. Let’s see, it would have been August the twenty-second. It was the day of the Pauceley Summer Fair. They have it on the water meadows down by the river. Meg came over for that. Keith was up in Birmingham with his sister, I think. She had a bit of lunch with us and then we all went down to the fair. I didn’t think I’d never see her again.”
“I don’t want to cause you any more distress than you must be feeling already, but did Meg say anything to you about her pregnancy? You did know she was pregnant?”
He made a face, a kind of wince, rueful and resigned. “After she was dead I did. Her mother and me, we talked. It’s not something we often do, but we did after Meg was…was killed.”
“Did Meg say anything to you at lunch or at the fair? I mean, anything unusual, anything apart from ordinary family things?”
“Nothing I can recall.”
“Well, if you do, Mr. Bartlow, if you remember anything, you will let us know, won’t you?”
Hannah went back into the torrential rain she had come from. The car was parked no more than a dozen feet away, but by the time she had unlocked the driver’s door and flung herself inside her clothes and hair were dripping with water. She was supposed to be going out with Bal this evening. Going out with, not staying in with. Wherever they went they’d get soaked again—with no warm comforting bed at the end of it.
Across the valley of the Kingsbrook the storm swept on. A man on Sewingbury golf course was struck by lightning and died at the fourteenth hole. The River Brim burst its banks where it ran beside Mill Lane, but no water reached the kitchens and living rooms of the three houses in Jewel Terrace. Those of the overhead electricity cables in the Brimhursts, Myfleet, and west Kingsmarkham that were not damaged by lightning were beaten to the ground by wind and rain. The light went out in Dora Wexford’s fridge, the ice began to melt in her freezer, and her oven ceased to function, but her gas hob still worked. Sylvia had no ice for drinks when the Beaumonts scuttled around under umbrellas at six.
CHAPTER 19
* * *
The morning was dark, so dark as to need lights on—only there were no lights. He had forgotten about the power failure when he got out of bed and even then didn’t connect it with the hot water. But there was no hot water either. He hadn’t had a cold shower since a holiday in Spain and that had been years ago. The cold shower was welcome then but very different now. When the first jet struck his shoulders he thought it would kill him.
Dora was still asleep but stirring. He asked himself why he should make tea and bring it up to her when she treated him as if he had betrayed her. Because he refused to put on a solid front with her against their daughter? He wouldn’t. Let her see what it was like to be cold-shouldered. Then he told himself not to be a fool. That was the way marriages started to break up. Those were the opening moves. He went downstairs, put a saucepan of water on the gas hob, two teabags in cups, and lit the gas. “I just hope there’s enough bottled gas,” he said aloud.
The saucepan seemed to take ages to boil. He took the cup up to her. She was sitting up on the side of the bed and she had been crying.
“What is it?”
“The baby,” she said. “I can’t bear it. I can’t bear the thought of never seeing our grandchild. Not because it’s died—that would be appalling, I know—and not because its mother can’t afford to bring it up, but just through a stupid whim. One of the worst things ever thought up in the world we have to live in.”
He put his arms around her but she stiffened and pulled away.
“We’ll never see it—him or her. Yet we’ll know he’s nearby, a few miles away. In time to come I could be out shopping and see him and not know it’s him. I could keep looking for his features in the children I see. Why can’t you see it my way? Why do you have to see her point of view?”
“Because I’m a different person, I dare say.”
“People who are married are supposed to be one.”
“I’m afraid that’s too idealistic. We have to agree to differ. Can’t we do that? I don’t like it any more than you do, you know. I just don’t see the point in doing anything now. We can’t cut ourselves off from our child and think, well, we’ll send her to Coventry for a while and then we’ll all be close again. Because it’s never going to go away. It’s as you say, he or she will be living quite near us. Sylvia herself will be affected by it too, whatever she says. She’ll need us because, if you come to think of it, she won’t really have anyone else.”
The same type of brick, possibly even the same brick, had been used to kill Megan as had been the murder weapon in Amber’s case. One, as the plinthologist said, of a million like it. None of them, as it happened, in the vicinity of Victoria Terrace because none would be used in its reconstruction and refurbishment. But they could be found, Wexford reflected bitterly, on almost every other building site in the county; in the country, come to that. William Fish or one of the two men working for him, or Ross Samphire or his brother or the assistant who had been at work with him at the Hillands’ house, any of them could have picked up a brick probably within yards of their homes.
On the side of the hill behind the town, lights were coming on in houses where before all had been dark since the previous afternoon. Theirs would be on too and he’d be able to have a hot shower in the morning. He had called the Samphire link with this case threefold, but
wouldn’t it really be fourfold? Surrage-Samphire worked for Marshalsons’ Studio. They had done decorating work for the Hillands. They were about to start work on the house where Megan’s body had been found. And Ross Samphire had met Amber. He had done more than just seen her, for the last time she had come to the Hillands’ home he had been in conversation with Vivien Hilland. He had been talking to her when Amber and Brand arrived. So four connections, though all of them tenuous.
He rang for Hannah and when she came said, “I’m getting over to Sandra Warner’s and I want you with me.”
“Right, guv.”
“We’ll walk.”
No doubt she would have much preferred Baljinder’s company to his. That was natural. They walked in silence and he thought about his daughter and her sons. Like Dora, he was beginning to wonder if things could ever be right again in a family of which one member had been taken away, if the others, mother, grandparents, even sister and cousins, could ever quite forget, could ever forgive. For the first time he asked himself what it had been like in Sandra Warner’s family when Megan had given her baby up for adoption. According to Lara, she spoke of it robustly, as if this relinquishment of the child was so obviously wise and prudent that there was barely any question about it. Did she really feel that way or was she merely putting a brave face on it? And what about Megan herself? How had she really been? How would his Sylvia really be when she had given birth and handed the baby into Naomi Wyndham’s arms?
He didn’t speak at all for nearly ten minutes and then it was Hannah who spoke first, asking him in a small voice unlike her usual tones what they were to see Mrs. Warner about.
“Samphire,” he said. “Does she know him? Megan’s pregnancy. Can she throw any light on that? I’m doing it,” he added rather bitterly, “because, frankly, Sergeant, I don’t know what else to do. We have nothing to go on except the fact that Ross Samphire was contracted to work on Victoria Terrace and Ross Samphire had once seen Amber. That’s all.”
